Texas book reviews and author interviews from the companion "Will's Texana Monthly" and elsewhere.

The Bookshelf, The Parlor, The Young Texas Reader, and the Monthly

The Texas Bookshelf is different from the The Texas Parlor, http://texasparlor.blogspot.com/ . The Texas Parlor carries "general" bookish information and non-book information and even different Texana news and notes of use to the bibliographically challenged and other nosey folks intersted in historical, literary, and cultural observations. Will's Texana Monthly may carry material from either blog, but extends itself beyond those, especially for longer compilations or treatments. The Monthly, the Bookshelf and the Parlor are all companions. So, is the Young Texas Readerhttp://youngtexasreader.blogspot.com/ which specialized on books and such things for the youngest to the teenagers.

Monday, February 23, 2009

Hiding Man - Daugherty

KERA radio carries a review by Jerome Weeks of the Donald Barthelme biography. Weeks begins straightforwardly.

"Donald Barthelmewas one of the most influential, if not most important, writers to come out of Texas. A handful of modern American writers can be said to have shaped the art of the short story: Ernest Hemingway, Katherine Anne Porter, J. D. Salinger, Raymond Carver — and Donald Barthelme, the most startlingly unconventional of the lot. And the funniest. The man who made surrealism and dadaism mainstream in American fiction."

If you think wrestling with Mickey Rourke could be an awkward but rewarding experience, just try reading Barthelme. Some call him post-modernist, some call him experimental. But some of his writings, some based on his life's experience like the death of the father, and some based on his modest relation of how to properly develop Galveston real estate are easily Texana. Sometimes you could think yourself back in 1st grade being careful while cuttinig out construction paper figures and eating the paste.